MARK COLVIN: Elephant poaching in East Africa is now at such crisis levels that elephants could be extinct in Kenya within a decade.

Now the Kenyan government's announced a tough new crackdown.

Conservationists and the wildlife industry have welcomed the provisions, which include tougher penalties for poachers.

For Kenya the new measures are part of an attempt to avoid being blacklisted by the convention on endangered species.

Africa correspondent Ginny Stein reports.

GINNY STEIN: Kenya's Maasai Mara is the stuff of legend: teeming with wildlife and a major international tourist drawcard. At this time of year, hundreds of thousands of wildebeest have made it to Kenya, and the annual migration across the plains of East Africa in search of grass and water.

In the Naboisho Conservancy, Maasai tribal land owners have banded together to try to preserve the areas wildlife while earning a living from it.

But in recent times, it's become a place of death, where wounded elephants speared by farmers and poachers, have come to die.

Isaac Rotich is one of Kenya's leading wildlife guides. I'd only just arrived when he got the news of another death, this time a young bull elephant.

ISAAC ROTICH: This looks like an arrow. It looks like an arrow went in. So it's this intentional killing for sure. More....